Kazi Ghiyasuddin

Beautifully illustrated, this is the first volume in a world first series of volumes dedicated to the ‘Contemporary Masters of Bangladesh’. Kazi Ghiyasuddin (Madaripur, Bangladesh, 1951) has been living between Bangladesh and Japan since 1975, when he took up a scholarship at the National University of Fine Arts and Music in Tokyo. He draws his inspiration from nature to project his desire for harmony and peace on richly textured canvases, which resonate with delicate, inwardly expanding applications of paint. While Ghiyasuddin has consistently displayed a refined urban sensibility which is at home in any international environment, he has put a premium value on expropriating colours, motifs and themes that typify the essential Bengali aesthetic. His early works employ bustling colours with rich tonal variations and bright visual fields. About 20 years ago, he adopted a new style. At that stage he erased his earlier canvases by painting over them with white, light grey and light blue. He is concerned as peace wanes in urbanised parts of the world and believes that nature is the ultimate destination for peace. Ghiyasuddin’s genre of work is abstract, with finely sketched figures or objects on the canvas.